The Sons of Jupiter Read online

  Contents

  Preface

  The Sons of Jupiter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  2018

  Author's Notes

  The Trials of Io: Preview

  Preface

  Dear Reader,

  It is with pride and joy that I present to you The Sons of Jupiter, Book 5 of the Starship Fairfax series. I can only hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it; if you do, I’ll be a happy writer indeed!

  If you like what you read and you’re interested in helping me be able to make more, then I have a few favors to ask of you. Ugh, I know. Favors are the worst. You’ve already bought this book, so I can’t really ask anything more of you! But if you’re feeling generous, here are some things you can do to pat me on the back:

  Consider leaving a review. Whether on Amazon, Goodreads, or elsewhere, ratings and reviews will draw more readers to this book.

  If you’d like to read more, join my mailing list. You’ll get a monthly to bimonthly newsletter with new releases, occasional freebies, and special offers. No spam, no email sharing, none of that nonsense. You’ll also get access to a mailing-list exclusive short prequel story, “The Trials of Io,” that will give you a glimpse into Darren’s mysterious past.

  If you can find it within yourself to do either of the above, I will be immensely indebted to you, and will send you good vibes as I write more stories for your enjoyment.

  Thank you, from the depths of my being, for reading! And now, without any further ado about nothing (ha!), here we go!

  Best,

  Benjamin Douglas

  The Sons of Jupiter

  The Sons of Jupiter

  Book 5 of The Starship Fairfax

  The Kuiper Chronicles

  By Benjamin Douglas

  Copyright 2017 Benjamin Douglas. All rights reserved.

  The author’s permission is required for any reprinting, distribution, or recording of this content.

  All persons within are fictional and not intended to be representative of any real persons.

  Books in The Starship Fairfax Series:

  0.5 The Trials of Io (newsletter prequel)

  0.75 Totaled (another prequel story)

  1. The Lunar Gambit

  2. The Hidden Prophet

  3. The Neptune Contingency

  4. The Star Wizard

  5. The Sons of Jupiter

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Caspar was the first officer back on the bridge. She raced for her station and strapped in, not wanting to get pinned to the deck by another attack from the voice before she could have her hands on her guns. Her trigger finger itched to shoot something—anything—out of the sky.

  “What was that?” Randall stumbled in behind her, winded. He’d run at her heels. Neither of them understood what had happened, but instinct had driven them both here. When something went wrong, the Fairfax needed two things: her helm, and her gunner.

  The bridge doors slid open once more and Lucas walked on.

  Right, three things. Her captain.

  “Sir,” Caspar said, “are you alright?”

  “What?” He cast his glance around, not meeting her eyes at first. He looked dazed. His hands were covered in blood. It was smeared across the front of his uniform, too. He breathed with his mouth open.

  “Sir?”

  He seemed to focus, spotting his chair and moving toward it. “Ah, yes, Lieutenant. Thank you. I mean, no. I’m as fine as any of us. Ah—” He sat and fiddled for a moment with his console. Caspar frowned. She had seen an ocean of potential in Lucas Odin from the first, but he had bumbled his way through one misadventure after another on his way to finding it for himself. Now wasn’t the time to bumble.

  “Orders, Sir?”

  “Just a minute,” he said. It wasn’t quite a snap, but coming from him, it seemed close. For the moment, she turned her attention to her own console, checking that everything was armed and ready.

  “Moses,” Lucas said, “What is the status of all Ceres survivors onboard the Fairfax?”

  Beep. “Ceres survivors currently number three-hundred, twenty-nine souls, all accounted for. One has just passed in the mess hall.”

  That would be Sharky, Caspar thought.

  “The others are still being held in the brig and on level eight, sealed.”

  “Good. Keep them there.” Lucas swiped his console and opened a ship-wide comm channel. “Attention, Fairfax. This is the captain. Everyone will report to battle-shift stations immediately.” He paused. “Stay ready for anything.”

  Caspar nodded to herself. This was the Lucas Odin she had hoped would rise to the surface.

  “Moses,” he said, “you said Darren and Private Mulligan were gone.”

  “That is correct, Sir.”

  As if on cue, the doors opened again and Ada strolled onto the bridge. She glanced at her station beside Caspar, saw the look on Caspar’s face, and headed for the comm station instead. Just as well, Caspar thought. Someone had to cover for the missing private.

  “Are you able to locate their ship?”

  Beep. “Yes, Sir. Cupid was on a heading in-system, toward Earth, but has recently turned back toward the Fairfax.”

  Lucas’ eyebrows shot up.

  “Change of heart?” Caspar said.

  “Moses,” Ada said, “aren’t you in control of Cupid?”

  “Negative,” Moses said. “My port on Cupid has been temporarily disabled. They are flying, I believe the term goes, manually.”

  Ada smirked from across the bridge. “Bet they can’t handle the girl.”

  Caspar frowned. She found it difficult to imagine Darren in many situations he couldn’t handle, besides perhaps stringing more than three or four words together in a conversation.

  “Why did they go?” Lucas wondered aloud. “Are they in comm range, Moses?”

  “Negative.”

  “Let me know when they are.”

  In the next moment, all the din and chaos of the bridge seemed to fade away to nothing, consumed by the omnipresent voice. Caspar thought of it as a voice because it said words, but they seemed to be said in her mind, rather than in her ears. Their force was every bit as startling as before, robbing her of the capacity to so much as think of anything else.

  “Captain Odin,” it said, “I have given you time. You have failed to make preparations to send the girl to me. This is your final warning.”

  Caspar blinked as her vision returned. The first thing she was Lucas, his face contorted in angst. It was useless. She knew, as well as he and everyone else, which girl the voice meant. And as much as she didn’t love the idea of offering her up to some unknown power, what choice did they have?

  “Sir,” she said, “shall I have a shuttle prepped?”

  Lucas set his jaw. “Yes,” he growled. He swiped the console. “Moses, have our guests Erick and Rylea join me on the hangar deck. Lieutenant Caspar?”

  “Sir?”

  Lucas stood, his look full of purpose. “You have the bridge. Take care of our ship. See that her crew survives. Secondarily, see what can be done about the drones. Third, the Ceres survivors. Fourth, tracking down Ambassador Taurius.” He paused, pursing his lips. When he spoke again his voice was colder. “No. Switch those last. Taurius first, then worry about the survivors. They can cool down in the brig for a while longer.” He seemed to wait for a response.

  “Ah… yes, Sir…” Suddenly it dawned on
her. “Sir! You can’t go with them!”

  He was already moving toward the door. “These people came with Cyclops. Cyclops came from Rome. And Rome is at the heart of this whole bloody business. Whatever’s going on, the answers are there, not here. I’ll do everything in my power to stay alive and bring them back to you. But if I fail, you’re in charge.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but saw that it was no use. And by the time she’d processed that thought, his back was to her and he was walking through the door.

  “Aye, Sir,” she called after him. She stood a moment, glancing back at her chair, then crossed and sat in his.

  ---

  Waiting was the worst thing.

  Caspar had never shirked from a fight. She loved a challenge, loved the chance to step up and prove herself, prove her enemies wrong, wipe the stupid slobbering grins off men’s faces whenever they reduced her to a piece of meat rather than recognized her peerage as an officer of the Kuiper Fleet. All of that, she could handle. Peril was a welcome guest. But waiting? Sitting on her hands and doing nothing while others made all the important decisions and danced with peril on her behalf?

  The. Worst.

  So the next hour of her life, though relatively uneventful, comprised sixty of the most infuriatingly tense minutes she had ever known. Lieutenant Caspar sat in the command chair of the Starship Fairfax and waited.

  About twenty minutes in, she tried to take the edge off with a little humor.

  “Hey, Randall,” she said. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  “Ummm…” The helmsman wrinkled his brow. “Aren’t zebras extinct?”

  “Wrong answer anyway, you dolt. A newspaper. C’mon, it’s a classic.”

  “What’s a newspaper?”

  “Seriously?” She shook her head. She couldn’t have been much older than him, but she felt the generation-gap. These kids, she thought. They just didn’t appreciate comedy.

  Somewhere in the second half she remembered that she now had her own private dispenser unit beside her, and decided to order a coffee to help stay alert.

  “Moses?”

  Beep. “Yes, Lieutenant Caspar?”

  “Just Lieutenant will do. What can you do by way of coffee? Anything fancy?”

  Moses rattled off an impressive list of lattes, mochas, and other assorted frothy beverages. Each one sounded more likely to knock her out post-sugar-high than to actually help her stay awake. In the end, she settled for an old-fashioned cup of black coffee.

  “Can’t go wrong with the classics,” she muttered. She decided to run a check of major ship systems to kill more time. “Moses, open a channel to Tompkins in engineering.”

  Beep. “Private Tompkins is not currently in engineering, Lieutenant.”

  “No?” She glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see him stroll onto the bridge. “Where is he?”

  “Private Tompkins is currently in medical bay C, unit 3, and undergoing operative surgery to mend the wound left by the Ceres dissident.”

  “What?!” Caspar stood up, wheeling around to glare at Lucas. Oh, right—he was gone. She glared at Randall instead. “Did you know that?”

  Randall’s shoulders drew up as tight as a pretzel, and his eyes bulged. “Don’t look at me, Sir! Nobody tells me anything!”

  “I’d believe that. Moses, how is he? I mean, how is it going? Is he going to be alright?”

  “His levels are all within appropriate range for the current stage of his procedure. He is presently sedated. Would you like me to wake him to speak with you over the comm?”

  For a moment she thought about saying yes, but when she considered the ramifications of waking up in the middle of one’s surgery, she decided against it. “No, just let me know when it’s over, will you?”

  Beep. “Affirmative, Lieutenant.”

  And so it went. Another half-hour passed, a stretch of tedium she waited out on the edge of her seat, waiting for something—anything. She’d agreed to do nothing for the first hour, to give Lucas, or the voice, or the Hive, a chance to do something. To make the first move. After that hour, she was free.

  She counted the seconds.

  Chapter 2

  Ada mentally flogged herself. She’d had her chance, her golden window of opportunity, when things had settled into a moment of quiet and Lucas had called everyone to the mess. She should have spoken up then, had her say, or even better, done it quietly, gotten Bone Crusher out before anyone could notice. Now, Lucas was gone, Caspar was in charge, and the Ceres survivors were on a tighter lockdown than ever—and Crush was with them.

  She cursed, then asked Moses subvocally what Joyce was up to. Still on Cupid, he answered, as far as he knew. At least, she had been when Darren and Mulligan had taken her out. Ada cursed again. Now there was no longer any question of how attached she’d grown to that little ship. The thought of someone stealing it from under her nose, and especially someone like Darren, so pitiless, so dangerous—the thought of her ship in peril—put her in a momentary panic. Without Cupid, she might as well be locked up in the brig, too.

  “I’m sorry, Ada,” Moses said.

  Ada frowned. She hadn’t realized she had been subvocalizing her thoughts. “It’s alright. At least I still have you.”

  “Yes. Although it would be difficult for me to leave altogether while also operating the Fairfax.”

  “Can’t you copy your code and leave the copy here to run things? Could be interesting, Moses. Moses two-point-O. Like a son.”

  “Interesting,” he said, his voice reflective. “Yes, I have considered it. But the process would take time, and precious resources. Memory on the Fairfax mainframe is fairly limited, and taken up now largely by two other AIs.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Jeffrey, the AI who attempted to mutiny, is being held in storage, locked in an archive.”

  “And the other?”

  There was a brief pause. “The other is different, and damaged. I am still trying to understand her.”

  “Huh.” Her? “Listen, Moses, I need to get Crush out of the Ceres population. Preferably before anyone else notices that he’s mixed up with them.”

  “That may be difficult.”

  “He’s in the brig, right?”

  “Negative. Bone Crusher is on deck eight, behind the sealed bulkheads.”

  Ada cradled her head in her hands. Things just got worse and worse. For a moment, she thought about leaving him. If she could get to a shuttle, maybe she could get to Cupid and be on her way. But no, that was ridiculous. Even if she managed to sneak a Fairfax shuttle off the ship, which was highly unlikely, it would be silly to run out to Cupid when Moses had already said Cupid was on her way back. She just hated trusting those people to bring her back in one piece.

  Anyway, she couldn’t leave Crush, no matter what stupid decisions he’d made in the past day or two. Not after everything they’d been through, not after he’d broken her out of Carmen’s brig. She owed him at least that small favor returned.

  She glanced around. The bridge was quiet, though she could all but feel the tension emanating from Caspar in the captain’s chair. She grimaced. Good luck to you, she thought. She slipped out the doors without anyone so much as turning their heads.

  Good.

  “Moses,” she subvocalized as she walked, “are there any bulkheads to level eight that would be easier than others to unseal?”

  “Negative, Ada. Unsealing any one of the fourteen bulkheads currently blocking the level would effectively expose the rest of the ship to potentially catastrophic failure of life systems.”

  Right. All levels below eight had gaping holes open to the void of space.

  “Furthermore, the rest of the Ceres survivors would then not be contained, which could have unwanted repercussions.”

  “Hm. And I don’t suppose there’s a way to access level eight without going through one of the bulkheads? Any way to circumvent them?”

  Beep. “There may be a way. But I do
not believe it is advisable.”

  “Oh?” Her interest perked up as she swung around a corner. “Keep talking.”

  ---

  Minutes later Ada was standing flat against the wall in the mess, cozied up to the corner beside the door that led into the galley kitchen. She paused, listening, and heard nothing. Then she pivoted out on the balls of her feet, took another look around, and crept into the kitchen.

  It was really just a narrow hallway lined with dispensers. The ship employed no human chefs; all the cookery was done by the computer and deposited through dispensers by order throughout the Fairfax, the central locus being here. “How’s cooking treating you?” Ada subvocalized.

  “Happily, the architecture was already in place to run all dispensers on a subroutine, so I have not had to give much attention to it.”

  “Oh? That’s convenient.”

  “Yes. Well, I may have assigned automation of the routine to a certain otherwise archived program.”

  “You didn’t?” Ada suppressed a laugh.

  “He has no other use at this time. Why should he not have a function? He will take up precious storage space on the mainframe in either case.”

  He had a point. Still, the thought of Moses pulling even part of Jeffrey out of cold storage to make him run the dispensers… it brought a smile to her face. From the little time she’d spent overhearing the previous ship’s AI, she assumed he found such tasks beneath himself.

  Across from the dispensers, garbage chutes and sinks lined the walls. Dish washing was also automated—by Jeffrey, Moses told her, and she could have sworn she heard a hint of smug satisfaction as he did—as was the disposal of waste. Waste shot down to furnaces in the belly of the ship, where it was incinerated before being recycled if possible, stored or jettisoned if not. On the way to those furnaces, it passed through the otherwise quarantined level eight.